Borders.

            From an early age the state and its propaganda section, attempt to get you to love that little patch of land that they have with force claimed and built an imaginary wall around, it's called a border. They need you to support them against some other state who might wish to shift the border in favour of their own, power, interests and control. You are trained to love this little patch of land of which you own none, you are trained to love the history of those who claimed this land as theirs and set up those invisible walls called borders. You are meant to have an unstinting love for its flag and its leaders, and patriotism is the poison they use to attempt to intoxicate you into a state of being prepared to give your life for their purloined piece of the planet. These borders are sacred to the powers that be and encourage a dislike and distrust of those on the other side. Trying to cross these borders can cost you your life, you can be herded like cattle in detention centres, classified as an "alien" devoid of any rights. Humanity demands that we bring these imaginary walls crashing down, there is only one race, the human race and we are all part of that race and live on the one planet which belongs to no one, or belongs to us all. Borders are weapons to protect the rich, privileged and powerful, and attempt to create differences between the various groups of people trapped within their boundaries. Freedom and democracy means no borders, and freedom of movement.

Patriotism

No, I shall not die for the fluttering flag,
if truth be known, ’tis nothing but a multi-coloured rag
held aloft by some foolish hand
inciting worker and peasant to kill
on some green and wooded hill,
peasant and worker from some other land.
 

Nor shall I shed blood for the fluttering rag
that brings out fools to stand and brag
of brutal deeds painted grand,
deeds where rustic and craftsman lie so still
killed by my brothers' misguided hand.

No allegiance have I for the Nation
this man made autocratic creation
that divides my brothers in a world so small,
binds us to a country's cause, right or wrong,
bids us follow its drum, sing its song,
then sheds our blood in some border brawl.

No, I'll be no slave to flag or nation,
have no ear for power oration,
though its iron heel is on my breast,
my back feels its leather thong,
at patriotism's barracoon, I'll be no guest.

The following from Enough is Enough:

           This summer we will organize a No Border Camp, somewhere* in the Netherlands.

Originally published by Indymedia NL.

This summer we will organize a No Border Camp, somewhere* in the Netherlands. A week of actions, networking, meetings and discussions about all aspects of repressive migration policies – detention of refugees, racist border controls, deportations, militarization of borders, exploitation of migrant workers, etc. – and the connections with other areas of struggle, such as climate, anti-racism and anti-militarism. The international Abolish Frontex campaign is an important spearhead for the camp.
In the No Border Camp we want to bring the undocumented and the documented together. During the camp, interesting workshops are held and we discuss how we can all take a stand and organize resistance against the harsh Dutch and European migration policies.

Note the dates in your agenda; further info will follow.

Ideas for workshops or actions? Can you help organize this? Mail us: nbc-2022@riseup.net.

* location to be announced shortly before the start.

Visit ann arky's home at https://spiritofrevolt.info    

UK inhumanity.

         The mainstream media quite often carry stories and photos of "illegal" migrants being picked up on the beach on this side of the Channel. They tend to leave the story there, they have done their bit, created the illusion of an "invasion" of "illegal" foreigners coming here to use our wonderful benefits system and destroy our very special way of life. The rest of the story is of little interest to them. The fact that these people have, in desperation, taken on a horrendous and dangerous journey, half way across the world, fleeing unimaginable violence, deprivation, persecution, death and destruction. All of these conditions mainly due to the foreign policy of the Western powers, that they run to for help, is not news worth to them.
         So they get picked, what next? They get a welcome and help? Well no, they get locked away from any social connection in detention centres, (prisons for desperate foreigners), they are trapped in a system of policing, devoid of any rights, caged. For how long, well nobody knows, weeks, months and in some cases even years. This being a truly capitalist country, all of this has to make a profit for some corporation, it has to stuff some CEO's bank account with tax payers money. So the UK's detention centres (prisons for desperate foreigners) are mostly run by private companies, human storage and cargo at a profit. As long as the corporate world can make money from this inhumanity, it will persist, it is a capitalist system, not a humanity based system.

The UK holds many accolades, not many of them for worthy causes.

         The UK has the largest Immigration Detention estate in Europe. UK policy results in asylum seekers facing detention at any time, even if they have committed no crime whatsoever. Detention has no time limit and is not automatically subject to Judicial Review. Many endure months and some endure years of indefinite detention.
          There are no safeguards in place to prevent the detention of vulnerable persons, including those who have faced imprisonment, torture and /or sexual violence in the countries from which they have fled. This harmful and expensive practice is unnecessary and deprives people of their freedom, their dignity and is damaging to their mental health.
         Detention Action Frequently Asked Questions about Detention and reports including Detained Lives. They also have a freephone number 0800 587 2096 for advice. 

         Conditions in these prisons for innocent foreigners, are far from decent, and far short of how any civilised society should treat desperate people in need of help. 

        Some detainees are being held for too long and in insect-ridden rooms at Europe’s largest immigration centre in west London, inspectors say. Conditions at Harmondsworth Immigration Removal Centre were “desolate”, with bare rooms, broken equipment, bed bugs and cockroaches, the report by Chief Inspector of Prisons Peter Clarke said. Some detainees were held for over a year, with one man held for five years.

And:

      The outbreak has led to renewed calls for all detainees to be immediately released. “The outbreak of COVID-19 at #BrookHouse detention centre was completely predictable - and utterly preventable. Nobody should be detained for immigration purposes during a global pandemic,” tweeted Freedom From Torture. Celia Clark, the director of Bail for Immigration Detainees (BID), similarly argued: “The government should now recognise that the use of detention and deportation in the current climate helps to spread coronavirus and puts lives at risk.

        Another of the UK's accolades is, we have the largest detention centre, (prison for desperate foreigners) in Europe. 

        Harmondsworth IRC currently has a capacity of 676, which makes it the largest detention centre in Europe. It holds only men and the security in several of the wings is comparable to a Category B (high security) prison. Harmondsworth is run by private security company Mitie, under contract to the UK Border Agency.
        The last inspection by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons was released in March 2018. The report found that there were considerable and persistent failings in the safety and respect afforded to detainees.

       In matters of detention, control, surveillance and policing, the UK punches well above its weight. 

 

Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk  

Those Migrants.

         No matter the country, nationalism and patriotism is the main drive of the powers that be. They all try to create this notion that the collective "we" of that country are special, different and should be protected from cultural infection of those others from over there. Migrants are the enemy, the are obviously inferior of criminal intent, and must be herded like cattle and denied any human rights. This technique has worked for centuries, making it easier for the state to gather its population of ordinary people behind its flag and send them over there to kill the population of ordinary people of some other state. All for power, wealth and/or resources to benefit the handful of power mongers that hold the reins of power.

        Patriotism is a poison that tries to tell us the we are different, sadly it is being fed to the ordinary people in every country across the globe. It's a poison that says we are different, when in actual fact we are all the same, human beings trying to make sense of our lives and survive in an alien economic system that benefits the few.

 Patriotism

No, I shall not die for the fluttering flag,
if truth be known, ’tis nothing but a multi-coloured rag
held aloft by some foolish hand
inciting worker and peasant to kill
on some green and wooded hill,
peasant and worker from some other land.
Nor shall I shed blood for the fluttering rag
that brings out fools to stand and brag
of brutal deeds painted grand,
deeds where rustic and craftsman lie so still
killed by my brothers' misguided hand.
No allegiance have I for the Nation
this man made autocratic creation
that divides my brothers in a world so small,
binds us to a country's cause, right or wrong,
bids us follow its drum, sing its song,
then sheds our blood in some border brawl.
No, I'll be no slave to flag or nation,
have no ear for power oration,
though its iron heel is on my breast,
my back feels its leather thong,
at patriotism's barracoon, I'll be no guest.

Brisbane, Australia: Fountain Runs Red for the Victims of Fortress Australia
Posted on 10/08/2020 by anarchistsworldwide

       This morning a group of autonomous dissidents went to the heart of Meanjin’s (Brisbane) capital and political district, close to the plush offices of politicians who make decisions about who gets to live freely and safely, and who remains indefinitely imprisoned and tortured in Australia’s detention regime.
         The fountain runs red today, representing the blood of the dozen or more refugees who died at the hands of Australia’s detention industry, and the thousands of others who have been mentally and physically tortured by it.

         We wrote messages to express our rage and our solidarity for the morning coffee goers, joggers and politicians who work in the corridors of power above, to read on their way to work.
        Though our gesture this morning is small, it is a symbol of our commitment to fight to the end for the freedom of refugees and abolition of Fortress Australia. We demand nothing but freedom and full citizenship rights for all asylum seekers and refugees incarcerated by Australia.
         This is not a game. Refugees have lost eight years of their lives imprisoned by this regime and childhoods have been stolen.
Enough is enough.
          We are counting down, there are only days left to choose humanity over this barbaric standard.

           Each day is another day of shame to Australia and the countdown is on.
5, 4, 3, 2, 1…

Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk

State Control.

       Recently all the focus of street protests have been on police brutality and rightly so. The recent police killing in Glasgow of an asylum seeker, has shifted some of that focus to how abysmal is the life of asylum seekers here in the UK. However what we should be aware of is that police brutality and the inhumane treatment of asylum seekers and migrants are not two separate issues, they are both organised aspects of the state apparatus. The police are recruited, funded, trained and protected from any real accountability to the public, by the state and its mouthpiece the media. Likewise, asylum seekers are the product of the state policy of, we are different, the British way of life, the spirit of "we brits" therefore better than those others over there. The states create borders and to help protect them the breed patriotism, the barrier to unity, and will expect you, or coerce you, into laying down your life to protect those imaginary lines drawn in the Earth. The fact that people leave their homes, family and loved ones, usual to get away from deprivation, persecution and death, make an extremely hazardous journey half way across the world and when they arrive here, they are deemed to be different, lesser, so need to be herded up, stored in inhumane conditions, robbed of their basic human rights, while their "betters" scrutinize their suitability to stay, is just another aspect of the state's injustice and inhumanity. Police brutality, asylum seekers and migrant, camps, detention centres, call them what you will, but barbaric prisons would be a better title, are necessary functions of the state in its never ending desire for control over a submissive population. 

Photo courtesy of RawStory.

     Somehow we are supposed to believe that teachers, bar staff, office workers, labourers, bus drivers, students from places like war torn Syria are different and inferior than teachers, bar staff, office workers, labourers, bus drivers, students, who happen though an accident of birth, live here in this collection of islands called the United Kingdom.

      You wish to end police brutality, and the abhorrent treatment of migrants, then you can highlight these injustices, but to remedy these problems you will have to get rid of the root cause, the state system and its economic master the capitalist system. 

Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk

State's Inhumanity.

         It is unbelievable that a so called civilised democracy can treat humans with such cruelty, herding them in disgusting conditions, removing their right to decency, inflicting on them conditions that endanger their physical and psychological health. Treating them to harsh and brutal treatment should they dare to object.
       Migrants, it's as though they arrive with a special badge signifying that they are sub-human, and deserve nothing from the community, no rights, and must be kept enclosed in filthy detention centres. One such detention centre that our media seldom if ever, mention is the Greek island of Samos, an island that its past can lay claim to be the birth place of such luminaries as the Greek philosopher and mathematician Pythagoras, after whom the Pythagorean theorem is named, the philosopher Epicurus, and the astronomer Aristarchus of Samos, the first known individual to propose that the Earth revolves around the sun. (this info from Wikipedia)

     Nowadays  It is home to 7,497 migrants in a camp made to house 648. these appalling conditions merit outrage not just from the migrants, but from all decent civilised people. These conditions are inflicted knowingly and deliberately by the Greek state authorities. Where is the international outrage, perhaps because the migrants on Samos are not the only ones, this is common practice across the globe by state after state.

This report from Act For Freedom Now:

 

         At the moment 7,497 people are being held in a centre built for 648.

     Many are unaccompanied minors. Protests against the dramatic living conditions are frequent: yesterday, Thursday, a revolt was suppressed by riot police, a fire had destroyed about one hundred tents and shacks on October 14 leaving thousands of people without shelter and forced to sleep outdoors.
      A protest was held on October 18 to claim freedom of movement and the possibility to finally leave the island concentration camp and for two days between October 24 and 25 a group of people held a permanent sit-in in piazza Pitagora, in the centre of Vathy. A riot had previously been severely repressed in the month of May. Also this morning, Friday December 20, the people being held in the Samos concentration camp continued their struggle without letting themselves be intimidated by the repression, and came out into the streets again reaching the city of Vathy in a determined and noisy demonstration. Translation to Italian by: Athens Indymedia

       About 300 immigrants began to protest on Thursday December 19 against the segregation and detention on the island, outside the main entrance to the detention centre, shouting slogans. They then headed for the minor entrance (which links the hotspot with the city of Vathy) and blocked the road. The police prevented them from carrying on the protest towards the city, which was only 500 metres away.
       The immigrants responded by overturning the chemical toilets, putting up barricades and throwing stones at the police, who reacted with a shower of teargas. The municipality of eastern Samos decided to suspend lessons in the nearby primary and nursery schools because of the strong smell of teargas present in the air.

Solidarity with the rebel immigrants!

       “They will never admit in their news that the act of rebelling was our extreme attempt to remain human” – from “Lotta contro l’oblio”, [Struggle against oblivion], the latest text of Apatris

       Try to imagine, 7,497 people, young and old, living in a detention centre, mainly tents, built to house 648 in rather sparse and restricted conditions!!

Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk

No Borders, No Prisons

       Detention centres, prisons, call them what you will, they are all state tools of repression, symbols of inhumanity, an abomination in any civilised society. Those who work in them are usually contaminated with the same DNA of the institutions that pays their wages. Who with a shred of humanity would want to be a guard over another human in a cage.

     This article is from Greece, but Greece is not alone in treating humans in this manner, we can all look a lot closer to home and find mirror situations. Migrants are one of the many state scapegoats, tools in the state's propaganda machine.

This From Enough is Enough:

       Athens, Greek territory. On December 19, 2019, was our last visit to Petrou Ralli Detention Center. Once more the number of detainees had increased and reached no50 50 women from 15 different countries. Indonesia, Ethiopia, Albania, Afghanistan, Georgia, Iran, Italy, Cameroon, China, Tibet, Belarus, Nigeria, Somalia, Syria, and Turkey. In our effort to talk with them, some police officers were in such close proximity that prevented women to express themselves freely about situations they experience. The behavior of some officers was also provoking towards us.

Originally published by Athens Indymedia.

        A characteristic testimony: “When we came here they forbade us to wear our headscarves and told us:” Out of here you can be Muslim, here NO! Here you are Christians… “
        Another testimony: “A police officer invaded into the shower room, while a prisoner was bathing, and made her pull the towel…” At the time, the health of several of them was very bad. Despite our own pressure for two women to be transferred to a hospital as emergency cases, nothing really changed. Τhese women are still very sick. Also, there are no doctors during weekends and during the night time, at Petrou Ralli. On Christmas day we were informed by relatives of prisoners for possible initiation of a few women on hunger strike. The day after our visit they started writing their experiences in the following denunciation letter, where they describe them with their own voices. Experiences that we can simply only imagine. Women from six different countries asked their will for their letter to be publicized. When you have lost everything you do not fear anything.
        Their voices should be heard in the whole world. You can discuss it in your assemblies. The organizations and institutions that talk about human rights should stop fooling us and playing with the plight of migrants and refugees, who are led to extermination.
        We stand by and admire these women for their bravery and solidarity they show to each other…

No person illegal, no person invisible

     Our Rebel sisters are right for the abolition of detention centers and opening of Borders, for stopping illegal racist & misogynist behaviors, for smashing verbal, physical and mental torture

The passion for freedom is stronger than all kinds of prisons

In streets, in squares and prison cells, migrant women you are not alone

The House of Women, for the Empowerment & Emancipation

spiti.gynaikon@gmail.com

Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk

Concentration Camps, Detention Centres And Democracy.

        The Trump guy is flag waving America into raw fascism, his "America uber alles" comes with all the trappings and dangers of blind nationalism. There may be those who disagree with the label "fascism" in this case, but if we take the words of that well know fascist Benito Mussolini as a guide "Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power", then there is no doubt that America is well and truly standing that vile dehumanising swap of fascism. Of course if we use Benito's quote as a guide, where does the UK or the EU stand? There is no doubt that the corporate juggernaut exerts considerable power over the states in both these cases. Have we sleep walked into fascism? America has already got its militarised police, its mass surveillance and its concentration camps, we in the UK have our mass surveillance and our "detention centres", places where those ever so nasty foreigners are locked up, before they can taint our purity. This in spite of the fact that we are all a form of mongrel human animal. Of course most people will agree that concentration camps and detention centres are an anathema to a free democratic society, but they are there.
        In my humble opinion, if we continually allow capitalism to exist it is inevitable that we would end up locked the tentacles of fascism. Capitalism is a system devoid of humanity, it does not in any way consider human well being. Its whole existence is for the purpose of amassing large amounts of wealth in the hands of the few. To do this it must conceal its true purpose from the public and control the legislation that allows it free rein to do so, certainly not the basis for a free and democratic society.  

        The following is an article  from "Birds Before The Storm" on America's concentration camps and the need to tackle these and other abominations head on. Of course it applies to our own particular patch of soil on this planet.

 

What Are We Going to do About These Concentration Camps?

magpie
        The first time I saw the Klan, I was ten years old. My brother and one of my sisters were in the car, and my dad was driving. We were stopped at a light and maybe five Klan members in full regalia were offering leaflets to white drivers. My father, a white man, rolled up the window, locked the doors, and grabbed the steering wheel in a death grip. When the light turned green, we drove away. “Those people carry guns,” he told us. He was excusing himself for not getting out of the car and physically confronting five large men, an action which could easily have put him in the hospital or worse. He probably did the right thing. He had three children in the car. There were five of those guys. The cost/benefit analysis of starting a fight was all wrong. But the Klan, wherever it shows its hideous face, should be confronted. Should be fought, through whatever means.
Sometimes we have to fight.

Which brings us to the concentration camps in America.
      My entire adult life, I’ve been politically active. I’ve gone to countless demonstrations. I’ve been in jail in two countries for fighting against things I consider deplorable. These past couple of years, I’ve been more of a cheerleader for antifascism than a street warrior, to be sure, but when Nazis come to my small town I’m out there with everyone else ready to tell them that it’s a shame their lungs are functioning. Yet this morning here I am, at home, just trying to live my life. I’m going to play a show later tonight, and I have to practice my harp.
       I have a lot of experience trying to just live my life while horrible shit is happening. Maybe you do too. Maybe you’re trying to drag yourself out of poverty while millions of people are in prison. Maybe you’re raising your kids while carbon pumps into the air and the US refuses to consider any agreement to limit the effects of climate change. Maybe you’re used to this.
       Every day, we make cost/benefit analyses and most of us decide not to do anything that would get us thrown in prison or gunned down by the armed forces of the state. We sit and think about that poem; you know the poem. “First they came for the communists and I didn’t say anything because I was not a communist…”
      That poem is derived from the post-war confessions of a pastor, Martin Niemöller. A conservative, he initially supported Hitler’s rise to power; he only decided to oppose the dictator when Hitler insisted the state was more important than religion. By the time Hitler came for him, of course, there was no one left to speak out.
        So what the fuck is wrong with our cost/benefit analyses? There are concentration camps on the border. By and large, they aren’t holding American citizens. So in the short term, it’s safer to do nothing. Maybe complain on Twitter. Maybe write articles like this. In the long term, though?

When is it time to act?
        It’s easy to feel like I have my hands full dealing with the local Nazi problem where I live. The paramilitaries that are crashing pride parades with guns and burning down community centers and doxxing antifascists eat up a lot of my brain space.
       It’s also easy to get overwhelmed by the sheer number of problems confronting us. The war on people with wombs. The war on trans people. The war on people of color. Climate catastrophe. The United States has always been a Bad Thing, from when slaving colonialists founded it all those years ago to when it became the police force of the world a hundred years back to when it declared a “war” on drugs to when the prison system—and its literal, legal slavery—became a for-profit industry. It’s always been a Bad Thing and we’re kind of numb to that. We suffer from a kind of disaster fatigue. Our ability to be outraged has already been heavily taxed, and sometimes climate change and concentration camps are simply Too Much Problem for us to wrap our heads around. Problems have this way of terrifying us into inaction, into numbness. Collectively, right now, we’re a deer in the headlights.

I, we, need to work our way through that. Fast. Now.
       They’re not coming for me today. I’m a trans woman, so yeah the right wing is working its base into a fervor blaming me for all our social ills and to be certain I’ve gotten a lot worse attention from strangers since Trump came into office. But no one is trying to put me in a camp. I could keep my head down. A short term cost/benefit analysis says that I should.

Fuck that.
        When mass action is called for at these camps, consider going. If you can’t go, support the actions. Support the people who take action who aren’t taking the kind of action you might take personally. Support pacifists who lock themselves to the gates of these places. Support rioters who break glass, cut fences, or physically fight the forces who are locking up children. Support the activists who target every aspect of this murderous machine. Support them all vocally and support them all financially. Do not let them play us off each other. Do not let them divide us.
       Any study of successful social movements in history is a study of how peaceful strategies and militant strategies, which seem opposed both tactically and ethically, complement each other very well. We need people who resist peacefully. We need people who resist less peacefully. And most importantly, we need to not get caught up fighting one another instead of our enemies.
       We need to take action. To be clear, voting is not action. Voting, very specifically, is a way of asking someone else to act for you. Engage in electoral politics however you would like. But never let the state strip you of your agency. You’re a human. You’re a person. You have the capacity to take action, to effect change. You have the capacity to work with others to do… well, pretty much anything.
It is completely possible for tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of us, to surround these camps and force them to release the detainees. It could work with fewer people than that, too, though I have a feeling there’s an awful lot of anger, an awful lot of power, waiting to be unleashed against the machinery of oppression right now. Mass action is risky. It’s messy. It’s terrifying. It’s also the right thing to do, and it’s perhaps only way out of this mess. There are a million problems, but this is one of them. And to change everything, you pick one problem and start there.

Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk 

Humans, Surplus To Requirements.

 

       The labels vary, refugees, asylum seekers, migrants, but these labels are usually badges of misery. People, human beings, uprooted forcibly, or fleeing hurriedly, in fear and desperation. According to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, in 2017, 65.6 million people were forcibly displaced worldwide because of persecution, conflict, violence, or human rights violations alone. Think of that figure, approximately the population of the UK hurriedly uprooted and moved on, usually in fear and desperation.

       A river of misery flows from Africa and washes over the graveyard that is the Mediterranean Sea, the inscription “We are not all there – The drowned are missing” is a bitter one. Those who survive that passage find themselves locked in groups at various borders, living in deprivation or in detention centres. Held at the vagaries of the autocratic states, who see them, not as suffering human beings, but as a problem of control. 

      The lot of the refugee, asylum seeker, migrant, is one of being stalked, and if found to be lacking the necessary piece of paper, locked up in some inhumane detention centre, with the constant threat of being thrown back into the hell that they tried to escape. A hell, in most cases, caused by the foreign policy of the host nations, who treat them like cattle. They will be stalked by uniformed gangs of thugs, paid members of the state's protection squad, whose duties are to protect the rich and powerful. These paid minions of the state with complete lack of morality will always obey orders, they are part and parcel of this corrupt and dying system.

       The so called "refugee/asylum seeker/migrant" crisis will only disappear when we end this system of capitalism, that sees humans as productive units or surplus to requirements. This system that spawns wars as a means of profit, that destroys vast swaths of the planet for control of resources, creating that 65.6 million "displaced persons". History tells us a bitter story written in letters of blood, of the dismal failure of this man made system. The future is yet unwritten, we can write that future, a future of humanity, mutual aid, co-operation and sustainability. A future where no one is a refugee, or an asylum seeker, where those power drawn lines known as borders, melt and fade into the dust of history. Only the ordinary people of this world can write that future, but only when they discard the man made cancer that is capitalism and abandon any belief in "leaders" and party "messiahs" who offer to guide them to that "pie-in the-sky" illusion of the promised land. 

Visit ann arky's home at radicalglasgow.me.uk

The EU War Against Refugees.

        No doubt tonight, as the clock strikes midnight, there will be celebrations across the globe, parties, food and drink, much merry making and comradeship. However, not for everybody, poverty, deprivation, imprisonment and detention centres, don't evaporate, refugees don't suddenly find a home. The suffering continues, it's just that most of us shut it out for a spell, perhaps we need a break from the poison fruits of the capitalist system and from the various states' power-grid of phoney borders, but we should not forget, the EU war against refugees takes no holidays.

This from Enough is Enough:

The Militarisation of Lesvos:

             Sometimes you don’t know where to start. Maybe that  Twitter “temporarily” warns people for my personal Twitter account because of “suspicious activities” (Hey Twitter maybe I logged in with a Greek IP adress because I am in Greece right now..)???
        But to be honest that’s a typical first world problem in comparison to the war against refugees the EU member states are fighting here on Lesvos. If you walk along the harbor of Mytilini, the capital of Levos island, you still see them; the small picturesque fisher boats. But nowadays you have to focus on these beautiful small boats to see them. When you see the big canons of a British “Border Force” ship, you start to ask yourself are they going to shoot and sink the dinghy boats with refugees one day? The big navy and Frontext ships are dominating the little harbor of Mytilini.
           And yes these ships also rescued a lot of refugees, but the Greek coastguard ships were also involved in illegal pushbacks to Turkey. Something the Turkish coastguard ships were also involved in. Sometimes the Turkish and Greek coastguard ships also attack the people on the dinghy boats with sticks or even sunk them, as can be seen on footage in a documentary I made here in September
       In the harbor of Mytilini I saw navy and Frontex ships from Bulgaria, Great Brittain, Greece and Italy. They are patrolling the sea between Turkey and Lesvos island. But you also see a lot of military- and Frontext vehicles on Lesvos. They come from countries like the Netherlands, Italy and Greece (just to name a few). The whole island is full of cops and military. Refugees get randomly checked in the city center of Mytilini all the time. You can observe several of these racial profiling operations when you drink a coffee on Sappho square. Day by day.

       The mutual aid work that we are doing here is one part, but we also document the situation and try to support people who are in danger to get deported. This all takes place in a hostile and militarized environment. In September I was chased by cops while taking pictures of the Moria Camp and last week a cops also wanted to check me, but I was lucky both times and was fast enough. The long days of buying food, sanitary products and other things people need for their daily life, documenting the situation and the work on legal issues and political stuff take their toll. I planned to report every day, but often I am to tired to write anything after the long days of work on the island. 
      Today is the last day of 2017, many people will celebrate New Years Eve but I don’t feel like celebrating at all and I have to save energy for the coming weeks. As part of the Cars of Hope team I will celebrate a bit with some of the people who are stuck here on Lesvos. I have a lot of wishes for the coming year, but I am afraid the EU member states will intensify their war against refugees.

Read the full article and view more videos HERE:

No Borders.

 

      The "migrant" question is still top of the agenda for most of the political parties, the usual cry being, "control must be restored" which is an admission that the state's control is far from complete, they always wish to go further down that road. A excellent excuse for more draconian rules and regulations, which don't just apply to migrants, but can be used in a blanket form against the general public. What always puzzles me is the wide acceptance across the population, of these new Orwellian rules. The "Calais Jungle" may have gone, but the people are still in transit, and still branded as illegal. Instead of congregating in self managing groups, they are being transferred to state managed "detention centres", in simple language, prisons. The following is an extract from an interesting article from Bordered by Silence.

Anarchist texts on the Calais Jungle
       Although by now the Jungle of Calais has been destroyed, these two texts by Paris Sous Tension are still very relevant for understanding the situation of migrants in France today from an anarchist perspective. Many of the migrants were moved from the Jungle to various detention or housing centres, but all of those spaces are temporary and they will soon be back with the others in the camps that appeared or grew following the Calais eviction. In November, several thousand people were evicted from the Stalingrad neighbhourhood of Paris, where a camp had grown on the grassy medians of busy commercial streets. With right-wing politics ascendant here in the lead-up to presidential election in the spring, it is likely that the attitude of the state towards the migrants will harden and that the two strategies described in these articles, repression and management, will take on an increasingly violent character. 
“I don’t want to go there. That camp is a prison, a sneaky way of imprisoning us.” from Paris Sous Tension, January 2016
       In Calais, the year 2016 begins in the same way the previous ended: by further repressive measures against the undersireables (undocumented people, outlaws, rebels…), by declarations of war against them by the government and its police. All with the explicit support of the most despicable segment of the population, those who have turned to xenophobia to soothe their miserable existence and who rejoice to see the government — who, in their opinion, never does enough —  go all out and resort to drastic measures. Those who, when things get serious, always line up behind the state and demand as the price of their passive adherence that the order be restored. Their only concern is to preserve their small comforts, their precious bank balance, their precious car and daily routine, their precious space of mental peace that all allows them to live their lives without paying attention to the world around them.
       Like many places around the world, people have been flocking to Calais for years now in hopes of crossing to England, crossing a border that is closed to them because they don’t have the required documents, because they don’t meet the legal requirements , because they don’t have a degree or a resume to help them sell themselves on the labour market, or rather because keeping this cheap labour pool living day to day and in fear is a good way to domesticate them and keep them readily exploitable. For years, these people have been organizing among themselves for survival, in hopes of managing to slip across the border illegally, of overcoming the many obstacles that separate one bit of territory from another for those who are seen as undesireable by the state and the market. And as is often the case in hostile situations, there is strength in numbers and so they’ve come here by the thousands (between 4500 and 6000 [1]) in an informal camp in an area now known as “the Jungle”. The cops, who used to simply destroy cabins and tents back when they were isolated from each other, don’t dare to enter “the Jungle” to evict the inhabitants. And these inhabitants, no longer being chased off every few days, are now able to organize themselves in small groups to sneak into cargo trucks in order to enter the tunnel under the English channel or to enter the port.
        And so we see in the past few months that companies like Eurotunnel and the SNCF rail network have restricted access to the tunnel and drastically increased security — the former by hiring a hundred dog handlers and the latter by erecting barriers along the roadways that are several metres tall and topped with barbed wire. As for the cops, more numerous and recently equipped with drones, they are happy to take advantage of a decree (a gift for the cops as part of the state of emergency) allowing them to stop any pedestrian on the road leading to the port and to pass them on to their friends, the judges, who can then condemn them to six months in prison. Oh joy, proclaim the the president of the region (who is calling for the support of the army to main-tain or-der!), the mayor of Calais, and the police chief  as they demand the deportation or imprisonment of every migrant found guilty of: trespassing around the port or near the Eurotunnel (which is necessary, considering the absence of a space-time portal to cross the border); conflict with the police (which has become necessary in order to access the sites in question, in addition to its general value); vandalism; or “by-law violations” (healthy reactions in the face of frustration, disappointment, anger, despair, rage…). It’s a way of oiling the judicial meat grinder, to wave the cleaver of prison or expulsion (which means, at the very least, starting again) over the heads of those migrants who don’t act the way the bureaucrats, functionaries, judges, and politicians expect: as victims.
        Governments of all stripes dream of order and pacification, but this isn’t in the cards for the near future. As proof, on December 17, about a thousand people set out along the highway towards the tunnel. With Christmas approaching and big traffic jams all around the commercial centres, they figured there would be more chances to sneak onto a truck. But the police didn’t agree, which lead to hours of confrontation. Same thing on December 25, 2500 people passed through the centre of Calais to reach the tunnel under the channel, but the police pushed them back. On their return trip, cars payed the price of their frustration and rage: rear view mirrors and windshields smashed, wipers bent back. A few uniformed goons were hurt. In these dark days, the blindest hatred meets the pettiest arrogance and cowardly submission prospers in the absence of any broader hope for a radically different life. We didn’t have to wait long to hear the half self-interested, half indignant grumbles and squeals of the peaceful and hardworking population as they lined up on the side of order.

Read the full article HERE:

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The Casualties Of World War III.

        Tucked away in corners of so called “civilised European society”, are places that the various states hope you’ll not notice. Hell holes of desperation, deprivation and intimidation, where people are herded like cattle, where they are processed like cans of beans receiving their bar codes. Such places get sanitised names like detention centres, holding areas, etc. The people held there receive this vile treatment because of a label that has been attached to them, “illegal migrants”. When in fact they are human beings fleeing the shock and awe of Western weaponry, that is pulverising their villages, towns and cities. They are people, old and young, trying to flee a world of daily death and destruction, victims of World War III. It is World War III, all the world’s major powers in their various cabals and power groupings, are in the Middle East, blasting their way to territorial gains that they hope will give them control over rich oil and gas fields. The people of that area can go to hell in a hand cart, as far as the powerful states involved are concerned. To the big corporations and the states that serve them, oil is wealth and power, people are disposable, at times superfluous to requirements. That is the basis of this festering cancer we live under, it is the guiding principle of capitalism. When it comes to wealth and power, in their world, war is a price worth paying. A world of shifting borders, displacing people and re-arranging geography, to suit the powers that be, people are just collateral damage, to be killed, displaced, or labelled, migrant, refugee or what ever, then abandoned. Only the people can bring an end to this savage insanity, those with the power and wealth will not abandon their their pampered privileged position, we will have to wrestle it from them, and the sooner the better.  

This from Act For Freedom Now:

 Lampedusa Sicily, detention centre.

       [Note: Hotspots are structures set up by the EU in certain States to swiftly identify, register and fingerprint incoming migrants]
       From the media we learn that yesterday, 24th August, at 8:30pm a group of people locked up in the Hotspot of Lampedusa set mattresses alight causing damage to a cell on the first floor, an area where underage migrants are detained.
       It seems that the fire brigade intervened promptly thus limiting the damage to one cell only. According to the local press a migrant boy was asphyxiated by the smoke.
     Yesterday’s was not the first protest to break out since the Lampedusa detention centre became a Hotspot. In fact on 18th May this year a revolt seriously damaged part of the structure and one of the three units in the Centre had to be closed down. The protest began when the authorities were preparing a mass deportation to Tunisia, following days of unrest among the people imprisoned in the Hotspot in protest at forced identification.
      Solidarity with the migrants in struggle against identification, detention and deportation
100s of such fires!

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The Real Question, Why Do Millions Migrate?

       That babbling brook of bullshit, the mainstream media, at the moment is focusing on the migrants trying to cross the Mediterranean, showing the “compassionate” West, saving thousands from drowning. Of course their “compassion” was more or less forced on to them by the shear numbers of deaths happening in that area, bodies washing up on the beach could be bad for tourism. But no focus on why there are so many trying to get out of Africa, and the part that the “compassionate” West played in that part of the problem. Not much research on why anybody would up-root themselves and risk their life to go to another country. Nor do we get much information of the conditions of those “rescued” migrants herded into camps in Greece and Italy.

      However, the Mediterranean isn't the only area where migrants are penned in and herded like cattle. Australia has a brutal system of dealing with migrants. Some of the figures coming from that, supposedly “good natured” land are just as shocking or more so than those in Greece.

       There have been 1,969+ deaths of asylum seekers associated with Australian border control between 2000 and October 2014. There are 7,784 people in immigration detention facilities as of December 31, 2014, of that number 2,111 are children. 50%+ of detained asylum seekers suffer significant depression, anxiety and stress. Rather than integrate asylum seekers in that vast land, during 2014 the Australian government spent over $1 billion on off shore detention. Crazy economics based on racism.
       States never want free movement of people, that makes things too difficult to control. Nor do they want integration, that may dilute their call to patriotism, when they decide to go and take a junk of some our state's turf. We know the problems, isn't it time we sorted them out?

 

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Deported To Death.

   More on the latest death at Yarl's Wood, from Act For Freedom Now:

       Here in England, yesterday (Monday) a man died in Yarl’s Wood detention centre. According to a corporate media report: One female detainee, who asked not to be named, said the man who died was 33 and his wife was also in her mid-thirties. Both were on a visit to the UK from their home in India when they were arrested and detained in the family unit at Yarl’s Wood. The detainee said she thought the couple had children back home in India. “The man’s wife is in a state of shock. She was taken to the legal corridor but she is not speaking,” said the detainee. “The couple had just had breakfast and the man had been drinking an energy drink. Suddenly he collapsed and died.” She added that the couple had been in Yarl’s Wood for two months. “I think they came here with visitors’ visas. They said they wanted to see London but they were detained at the airport and brought to Yarl’s Wood. As far as I know he was healthy and not on any medication. He was very nice and so is she, they would make us all laugh. They were a lovely couple but now she is quite alone.”

   And what happens to some of them that are deported from detention centres?

  
    On Sunday, the islamic fascist scum of ISIS released a video claiming to show the killing of 28 Ethiopian christians by their soldiers in Libya. Today, three of the people killed were identified by their friends and loved ones as Eritrean refugees who had been deported from migrant detention camps in Israel. Media Report HERE.

Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk